Scholarship and Quadriplegia

Abstract

[1] Disability can make scholarship a challenging enterprise. I have faced such challenges for over 20 years now, so my experiences both as a quadriplegic and paraplegic may prove useful to others in comparable circumstances. It is in this spirit that I offer the following comments.[2] I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988, a year after being appointed at Lawrence University as an Assistant Professor of composition, theory and music history. My condition was more or less invisible for a couple of years, but in 1990, after winning the school's teaching award, my legs began to fail and I started to use a cane. Soon I graduated to a scooter and modified Dodge Caravan in order to get around. I maintained my position (and received tenure) as a paraplegic until 1996, when I began to lose the use of my arms. I became fully quadriplegic a year later, and retired from my position in 1998.[3] Since then, I have done all I can to maintain a presence in the field. I have published articles in academic journals, contributed book, CD and DVD reviews to a well-known classical record magazine, broadcast a monthly radio show on a local NPR affiliate, lectured at various institutions, and even taught as an adjunct professor at a nearby college. In short, I have tried to do everything I used to do-given my limitations and changed circumstances. It is those limitations, some intractable, some imposed, that I intend to address.[4] Every disability is different and presents different obstacles; thus I can only speak of my own individual experiences, freely admitting their likely inapplicability to other situations involving physical compromises. I would like to concentrate on issues specifically involving musical scholarship, that is, research, study, and generation of legible and submissable scholarly work in the field of music, produced without the use of one's limbs. Music scholarship entails special demands for a quadriplegic scholar, including the task of score reading, the necessity for page turning by skilled assistants, generation of complex examples in (often modified) musical notation with programs usually incompatible with existing voice activation software, copying of musical examples, and so forth. Not being a computer scientist and lacking consistent technical support are obvious problems, as well as the quite catastrophic evaporation of library privileges following resignation from a teaching position. It is hard to overestimate the consequences such a loss entails for the sustenance of serious scholarship. I will return to this issue below, but for now simply cataloging related problems as they come up in my daily routine of reviewing and writing might be of value.[5] I have currently been studying the work of Swedish composer Allan Pettersson, who himself fought physical disability for most of his career, and have been evaluating the literature surrounding his music from the perspective of current work in Disability Studies. First, a word on how I wrote what you are reading. I use a voice activated program called DragonDictate which enables me to dictate text into my computer. This is, of course, a miraculous development, but still nothing in quadriplegic disability is possible without the assistance of people with the use of their hands.[6] My day begins with my aide turning the computer on and fitting me with a headset. He must click on the DragonDictate icon manually to start the program for me. This obviously cannot be done without assistance. Once in, I am able to compose text and use the Internet. If I need to work with printed text, I must have the aide turn on my printer manually and retrieve the printed document or documents. These must be manually laid out in such a way that they can be read by me. Page turning and text distribution or ordering is another task that requires assistance.[7] Part of my research involves analysis of two works by Pettersson, his Sixth Symphony and Second Violin Concerto. …